Case Study: Nassau Community College

CASE STUDY FOCUS: ACCOUNTING

Nassau Community College

This case study is a subset of a larger-scale efficacy report commissioned by Wiley that included use of WileyPLUS with ORION at U.S. colleges and universities which were among the early adopters of ORION. A separate report is available that aggregates findings from these case studies into an overall assessment of efficacy across participating sites in the Spring 2014 term.

Professor Caroline Falconetti teaches Accounting at Nassau Community College in Long Island, New York. In the Spring 2014 semester, she incorporated ORION and WileyPLUS into her ACC 101: Accounting I course. The course had two in-person sections with 30 students across the sections. There were no prerequisites for the course, but students could not be in remedial courses at the same time.

Using WileyPLUS with ORION

Professor Falconetti made ORION available to her students, but did not require students to use it. Students had the opportunity to engage with up to 12 chapters of content. While ORION was available to the students for the entire semester, Professor Falconetti made the students aware of it later in the semester. Most of the students attempted two chapters, with an overall average of 2.8. Students spent an average of 44 minutes using ORION, with 20% using it for more than one hour. Students ranged in their performance in ORION proficiency. The average proficiency score across all assessments was 47%, with nearly half of the students averaging below a 40% in their scores.

WileyPLUS

Professor Falconetti also included homework conducted in WileyPLUS as part of the course grade. Students averaged 84% across the 11 assignments. Nearly two-thirds of the students earned either an A or a B on their WileyPLUS homework.

Results

Half of the students earned a B in the course, with over a quarter earning an A and no one failing. The overall average on a 0.00-4.00 scale was 3.08. Those who performed well in both ORION and WileyPLUS performed well on the overall grade. Students who engaged with ORION earned a half grade higher in the course, averaging a 2.22 vs. 1.85 for those who had limited or no engagement. For WileyPLUS, students who averaged an A in WileyPLUS earned an A- overall, while those who averaged a B in WileyPLUS averaged a B overall. Those who averaged less than a B in WileyPLUS earned a B-/C+ in the course overall. Additionally, those who spent one hour or more using ORION earned a 3.48, while those who spent less time earned a 2.98. Students who utilized both WileyPLUS and ORION to their full potential did well in the Accounting course.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Students who averaged over 70 on ORION earned an A for the course, while those who did not use ORION earned a C.

Students who spent an hour or more using ORION earned half a grade higher than those who spent less than an hour.